Part 2: Join archaeologist Dr. Ryan K. McNutt as he leads us through stories of human misery from both enslaved camp builder and Prisoner of War perspectives, informed by his directorship of the archaeology and history project at Camp Lawton, a slave-built open-air US Civil War POW Camp established in the horrific winter of 1864 by the Confederacy to hold Union Prisoners moved from hellish prisons like Andersonville.

Meant to be Over By Christmas, the US Civil War lasted for four horrific years, leading to nightmarish conditions for POWs incarcerated within vast and poorly-planned prisoner of war camps.

In Part 2 of this podcast, Ryan talks about:

- Malnourishment, disease and death

- (TW) PTSD

- The wartime chronology of the site - Union invasion of the South

- Today's outreach program(me) and African-American finds

01:58 - local wildlife: alligators, mosquitos, tarantula-sized spiders

03:48 - digging the archaeological site of Camp Lawton surrounded by alligators

04:22 - POWs eating rodents like gophers and turtles to stave off starvation

05:07 - snakes: desperate POWs capturing, skinning and eating a 6-foot snake

06:04 - the horrors of malnutrition, disease, gangrene, blood poisoning, scurvy, smallpox, exposure

09:55 - money: 'Your survivability is tied on how lucky you are to have money'

10:28 - PTSD as a killer: the horrors of war and Camp Lawton POWs digging their own graves

12:45 - POW mental health issues: letters home talk about 'other' prisoners' torment

14:10 - boredom: keeping yourself busy with escape attempts, crafting (chess pieces)

16:02 - wartime chronology: Sherman's March to the Sea through Georgia and evacuating Lawton

18:44 - Lawton evacuees' deadly winter journeys to new POW camps; some back to Andersonville

20:10 - winter clothing in short supply: taking clothes off dead POWs

23:39 - past and future archaeological finds at Camp Lawton: 'time capsule' site

28:30 - investigating the African-American presence at and around Camp Lawton

Links:

https://twitter.com/CampLawtonGSU

https://cbss.georgiasouthern.edu/camp-lawton/from-the-director/

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